Here’s something a bit different, and more akin to the third party offerings many Transformers fans have access to these days. 1000 Toys is a company largely known for their excellent 1/12 Scale TOA Heavy Industries Synthetic Humans, which you can order from our site sponsor BBTS using that link. Now they’re taking a stab in a different direction with some figures heavily inspired by Super Sentai & Kamen Rider!

These new Synthetic Human sublines, “Nextman Synth” & “Knight of Synth” share the same basic engineering as the Heavy Industries figures, with a little toku sensibility mixed in. The seemingly rider themed Nextman figures are named Cyclone, Fusion, & Future. Each retailing for $80 USD. Their pizza themed sentai-inspired heroes are also on display. These guys appear to be based on figures originally created by Youtube pairing Toy Pizza. You may also be familiar with the Mecha Zone Pizzanuats figures based on these designs. The green knight is Lime, red is Brick, blue is Teal, and the black one is Death Knight. Each of these is also $80 USD.

Stay tuned to TokuNation here and on twitter (@Tokunation) as we continue our LIVE coverage from the SDCC 2017 show floor!

The seemingly rider themed heroes are labeled as "Nextman Synth". Those named on placards are Cyclone, Fusion, & Future.

The pizza themed sentai-inspired heroes are also on display. These "Knight of Synth" figures appear to be based on figures originally created by Youtube pairing Toy Pizza. You may also be familiar with the Mecha Zone Pizzanuats figures based on these design. The green knight is Lime, red is Brick, blue is Teal, and the black one is Death Knight.

And it's rare for Kamen Riders to look or even remotely be based on bugs anymore.

Leaving aside the enormous outlier that is Ex-Aid, our next Rider has compound eyes and heavily-abstracted antennae.

Nearly every modern Rider design starts with Ichigou as a base, then riffs wildly. Fourze was a rocket... with compound eyes and little antennae. Wizard replaced the compound eyes with gems, and abstracted the antennae down to part of the "setting" shapes. Gaim re-imagined compound eyes as the meat of an orange.

They're not often blatantly bug references anymore - a person would have to have a certain level of familiarity to catch them - but they're nearly all remotely based on bugs. (Probably not Ex-Aid and maybe not Hibiki.)

Leaving aside the enormous outlier that is Ex-Aid, our next Rider has compound eyes and heavily-abstracted antennae.

Nearly every modern Rider design starts with Ichigou as a base, then riffs wildly. Fourze was a rocket... with compound eyes and little antennae. Wizard replaced the compound eyes with gems, and abstracted the antennae down to part of the "setting" shapes. Gaim re-imagined compound eyes as the meat of an orange.

They're not often blatantly bug references anymore - a person would have to have a certain level of familiarity to catch them - but they're nearly all remotely based on bugs. (Probably not Ex-Aid and maybe not Hibiki.)

Implying I don't have familiarity with a franchise I've spent over a decade working on fan sites with, and have been a fan of for much longer

The vague hints toward the bug motif were lost around Den-O. They're superficial most of the time now, eyes and a few callbacks here and there. My point in making that point originally was that these figures don't have to look like bugs to be Kamen Rider inspired because Kamen Rider simply doesn't look like that anymore in the first place. When your themes become magic, cars, fruit, video games, trains, etc, the notion of a single motif is no longer valid. The bug theme isn't there anymore and that's perfectly fine, but compound eyes don't just re-validate the notion that it is either. Kamen Rider is simultaneously everything, it's unifying theme is heroism and justice now. It doesn't need to be bug related, nor is it any longer. You can grasp for it all you want, but the superficial design elements like compound eyes and belts to transform are about the only lingering elements left anymore.